A Quick Look

     What she wants to do if she can get the time to do it,
      is not so much to live in the past
      as to open it up and get one good look at it.
            —Alice Munro


She took the past out of a wood chest
examined it for clues, turned it inside out,
hung it over a clothesline to freshen up
It still carried a scent in a pocket
and a grass stain she no longer recalled
Then she remembered and folded up the past—